PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026 REVIEW! In co-writer/director Maryam Touzani’s Calle Málaga, a quiet Tangier street becomes the stage for a deeply personal story shaped by language, memory, and the ache of losing the place you’ve called home for your entire life. Touzani and co-writer Nabil Ayouch channel heartbreak into a character-driven drama where the fight isn’t about quick cash, it’s over the place you call home.
María Ángeles (Carmen Maura) is an 80-ish Spaniard, born and raised in Tangier, Morocco. Now retired and widowed, María still lives in her childhood home. Her blissfully peaceful life is interrupted when her daughter, Clara (Marta Etura), comes to visit without the grandchildren. Clara moved to Spain with her then-husband, but after the divorce, she is struggling to make ends meet. Since her father/María’s husband left the home, Clara tells her mom she’s selling the house, and that’s final. Stunned by the news, María refuses to move to Spain with her and, for that matter, refuses to leave the house. But Clara convinces her mom that the local senior residence would be the perfect place for her. The daughter then packs everything up, sells María’s furniture and record player to a local antique dealer, and prepares the house for sale.
Though it’s a nice facility, María wants no part of this senior center. When Clara returns to Spain, María concocts a plan with the help of her old friend, Sister Josefa (María Alfonsa Rosso) — a nun who had taken a vow of silence — and escapes the senior center, moving back to her home. With the place empty, María makes a deal with the antique dealer Abslam (Ahmed Boulane) to buy back all her furniture over time. The problem with María’s plan is that she doesn’t have much money or a job, and the real estate agent is bound to show up at an open house and snitch on her to Clara.
“…María concocts a plan with the help of her old friend, Sister Josefa…and escapes the senior center, moving back to her home.”
Touzani absolutely nails it with Calle Málaga. She said the drama came straight out of grief. She lost her mother suddenly almost two years before the screening, and writing the film was her way of “unconsciously” transforming that pain into images and language she could live inside. The filmmaker explained that she grew up in Tangier, speaking Spanish because of the Spanish community there and because her mother was half Spanish. After her mother died, she felt a need to “continue the conversation” in her head and keep hearing that language, which is one reason the film is primarily in Spanish. Touzani also said setting the story in Tangier let her return to her hometown and face her mother’s absence, describing cinema as a kind of healing and the film as a tribute to Tangier and the Spanish community there; a real love letter to the city.
Maura gives a performance of a lifetime. María is the mother you can’t help but fall in love with when you meet her for the first time. It makes the bitter relationship with her daughter all too real. From minute one, we’re on María’s side and wish nothing but the best for her and that she can scheme her way back into her home. At one point, she turns her home into a European football theater as Morocco heads toward a World Cup title. Then there’s Abslam…spicy. Let’s not forget there’s also a home for sale.
The world of Calle Málaga is small. It takes place on a simple street in a simple town where everyone knows everyone else. Everyone is cordial and competitive at the same time, as the film focuses on the place we call home and how leaving can be a bitter pill to take. In the end, this family drama hits you in the feels like a warm cup of cocoa before turning in for the night.
Calle Málaga screened at the 2026 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
"…hits you in the feels like a warm cup of cocoa..."
